A food blogger has revealed how a slightly larger portion size and adding a few extra ingredients to your meal can double the amount of calories you’re consuming.
Amanda Meixner, 26, from Ohio regularly shares her meal plans and healthy eating tips with her 476,000 Instagram followers, and has recently posted a series of images showing the calorie difference between two seemingly identical plates of food.
One image shows two eggs and two eggs whites scrambled with half an avocado on toast and a sliced apple, which amounts to just over 500 calories.
But adding the rest of the avocado, two more eggs and a spoonful of peanut butter more than doubles the calorie count to over a 1,000.
Meanwhile a 472 calorie snack of yoghurt, dark chocolate, nut butter and berries suddenly becomes almost 900 calories with the addition of 40g more chocolate and 2 extra tablespoons of cashew butter.
Her posts seem especially pertinent following the release of figures from the Office for National Statistics showing that British people are underestimating their calorie intake by 50 per cent – fuelling obesity levels.
Food blogger Amanda Meixner from Ohio has revealed how a small tweak to your meal can almost double the calorie count. Left: Two eggs and two egg whites scrambled, half and avocado on toast and one apple. Right: Four eggs and two egg whites scrambled, one avocado on toast, one apple, two tablespoons of peanut butter
Left: 1 cup Greek yogurt, one teaspoon honey, 20g 85 per cent dark chocolate, one cup blueberries, 1/2 cup strawberries, 1/2 tbsp cashew butter. Right: One cup 2 per cent Greek yogurt, one tbsp honey, 60g 85 per cent dark chocolate, 1/2 cup blueberries, 1/4 cup strawberries and 2 1/2 tbsp cashew butter
Blogger Amanda, 26, from Ohio regularly shares her healthy eating hacks with Instagram fans
Men typically have 1,000 more calories every day than they account for, while women consumed about 800 more than they estimate, and the more food people consume, the less reliable their estimates are.
Meanwhile, data from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows that the average American consumes more than 3,600 calories daily.
If you want to avoid piling extra calories on to your plate, Amanda recommends tricks such as having veggies noodles instead of sweet potatoes or pasta.
‘Skip the extra olives or extra fats for more veggies,’ she recommended. Swap out some eggs for egg whites – only 17 calories per one.’
Left: This salad has a greater proportion of vegetables to black beans. Meanwhile, the salad on the right has triple the hummus, an additional tablespoon of olive oil and additional 1/4 avocado
Left: One spiralized zucchini, one cup cherry tomatoes, one cup broccoli, one cup marinara sauce, 3.5 oz wild king salmon. Right: 1.5 spiralized sweet potatoes, nine olives, 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes 1 cup broccoli 1 cup marinara sauce 5 oz wild king salmon